Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Germany and American Holocaust Memory Since the 1970s, by Jacob S. Eder. 2016

German Guilt Diffusion: Smoking-Gun Evidence: Germans Are Trying to Shift the Blame For the Holocaust To Other European Nations. Polish Suspicions Confirmed

The highlight (or lowlight) of this book is the citation (see p. 254 and 271) of Elisabeth Kübler. 2012. EUROPÄISCHE ERRINERUNGSPOLITIK. (p. 28 in her work). In doing so, author Jacob S. Eder makes this bombshell statement, “The fact that the Holocaust has become a focal point of European memory beyond Germany has also served to ‘SPREAD GUILT EVENLY’ across the European continent.” (p. 200; Emphasis added).

German guilt diffusion and German guilt escapism are as plain as daylight!

For an example of this with regard to Babyn Yar in Ukraine, see my review:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/german-guilt-diffusion-smoking-gun-hrynevych/

HOLOCAUST PRE-EMINENCE NOW PERMEATES EUROPE AS WELL AS THE USA

In discussing the 20th anniversary (2013) of the opening of the USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), by which time it had hosted over 34 million visitors (p. 198), Jacob Eder commented on the mystification of the Holocaust and what is sometimes called the cult of the Holocaust, “Of course, the anniversary celebration of the USHMM would have been the wrong occasion to question the political relevance of the Holocaust’s legacies, but the ceremony showed how much the engagement with the Holocaust in the West had evolved since the opening of the USHMM in 1993. Top-level representatives of the Federal Republic, Poland, and France joined prominent Americans in affirming the centrality of Holocaust memory for European and North American societies.” (p. 198).

As for the USA specifically, author Eder leaves nothing to the imagination as he writes, “Textbooks, museums, and even board games made the Holocaust a ‘moral compass’ for millions of Americans. The Holocaust was transformed into the ultimate benchmark for assessing human behavior, a unique ‘moral reference’ point for all political strata of American society, and ‘the bearer of universal lessons’ that rendered it.” (pp. 19-20). Clearly, there is no business like Shoah business.

SOME OF THE ORWELLIAN TERMINOLOGY USED TO PROMOTE THE PRIVILEGED STATUS OF THE HOLOCAUST

The Holocaustspeak, and the ever-expanding mystification of the Holocaust, are now coming fast and furious, as alluded to by Eder, “With regard to Holocaust memory more specifically, scholars have explored its dimensions and implications that extend beyond the borders of a single nation-state, such as the ‘Europeanization,’ ‘internationalization,’ ‘universalization,’ or ‘globalization’ of Holocaust memory.” (p. 9).

MODERN GERMANY: MINIMIZING OR IGNORING THE NON-JEWISH GENOCIDES

The victimhood Olympics, started and promoted by the memorialization of the Shoah, continues with full ferocity in the 21st century. The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located in Berlin, is instructive, “The monument, only completed in 2005, thus had a long and complex history, which included fierce controversies over the necessity and meaning of such a monument, the question of whether it should be dedicated only to the Jewish or also to other victims of Nazi persecution and extermination policies…” (p. 192). Author Jacob Eder adds that, “Especially Sinti and Roma protested the fact that the monument should only be dedicated to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.” (p. 252).

USHMM–VIRTUALLY A PALACE OF HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY?

Elie Wiesel had set the tone for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He asserted the uniqueness of the Holocaust (while paying the obligatory tribute to its alleged “universal” lessons), and freely engaged in the mystification of the Holocaust. Let Eder tell the story, “This position also contributed to the dominant position of Holocaust survivors on the boards of the Council, who subsequently managed to implement a ‘careful hierarchy of victimization’ in the museum [Reviewer’s comment: Good choice of words], where non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution are ‘situated in relation to the Jewish center.’ In particular Wiesel’s interpretation of the Holocaust as a ‘sacred mystery’ increased the survivor’s position as a somehow ‘holy’ interpreter of the event. At the core of these discussions was the question of how the suffering of non-Jewish victims of National Socialism would fit into the Holocaust narrative.” (pp. 85-86).

That’s just it! The Nazi German genocides of non-Jews (for example, the Polokaust or Polocaust), could be mentioned at the USHMM –but only as long as they “know their place” as second-class genocides.

GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION: EARLIER GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO DODGE BLAME FOR THE HOLOCAUST

The first parts of this book describe prior attempts by the Germans to lessen their guilt for the Holocaust, notably by ultimately-unsuccessful efforts to get the then-new USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) to include an exhibit on post-1945 German democracy. In addition, German citizens noted the irony of Americans putting geographically-distant German crimes on exhibit, when they should instead have museums to the enslavement of blacks and the (alleged) genocide of Indians. (p. 100).

Another exculpatory line of German thinking surfaced during President Reagan’s controversial visit to a cemetery at Bitburg. Jacob Eder quips, “Hence Reagan would support an interpretation of Nazism according to which only a small group of criminals had been responsible for Nazi crimes, with the vast majority of Germans as innocent victims of the dictatorship.” (p. 66). This overlooks, among other things, the majority German support for Hitler, and the centuries of antecedent mainstream German supremacist thinking.

The German government had even offered considerable monies, to the USHMM, in order to influence its content, which would include a (greatly exaggerated) featuring of the tiny number of anti-Nazi Germans. (pp. 123-125). (Of course, anti-Nazi does not necessarily mean anti-warlike, but that’s another story.)